Community Step 1 – Be Passionate

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Last night's class on online communities was enlightening. I was able to ask many questions that were very important to me. There is still a little mystery involved in what is deemed an "online community manager" and also what an actual online community is. My impression is that it can be anything from a forum format to a blog with comments. My general feeling is that there is a lot of room for interpretation. The determining factor is that there is interaction between users and the manager. It was interesting to hear how some of the speakers shied ...

So you want an online store. Now what?

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It is no secret that many small businesses and hobbyists look at the online store as the holy grail. But before you jump on that band wagon there are a few things you need to consider.
Will people be able to find you on the web? Take a look at whether you are one of about a million people with the same idea or are you one of ten? Many times having a unique or niche item can make or break your online store idea. Having an existing site and customer base is a great ...

Where do Online Communities go to die? Facebook?

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My Monday mornings started as any regular work-morning except I received an email with a subject titled "ASPCA Community Closing January 31, 2010." Closing? How do online communities close? This is strange...<sip coffee>
In case you don't know what the ASPCA stands for it is The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. After getting this message I began to think about how Facebook, Twitter and other social media vehicles are in competition with themselves. In fact the email sent by ASPCA was in good spirits and really just directed their community of approximately 35,000 ...

Verizon Rumored to be New Carrier for iTablet

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So the iTablet (if that is even what it is called) is presumably days from a formal release announcement and part of the fun is looking at all the artist renderings of what the iTablet is going to look like. I am not even sure if the actual product has been seen by man! Regardless one of the interesting items that was announced on Fox News is that Verizon may become the new carrier for this product.
There are so many different market variables that will change with the release of this project ...

Groupon. Why not?

For the past couple of weeks my partner and I have been heavily involved in using Groupon.com. If you have not heard of it yet then use this link to sign up it is free and I get $10 if one of those referrals makes a purchase. Here is how it works: a person gets an email with the Groupon almost every day. If you like the group coupon then you sign up and put in your credit card. If enough people sign up for the deal then the deal goes through and all the people that signed up will ...

Here Comes Everybody – Comment 1

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Thank you! I am thrilled that the book of required reading for this class happens to be recent and relevant. After all, this program (APOC), is designed to get you ready for now--and not a history lesson which so many classes are.
I said it before and I will say it again, reading is not my favorite thing to do. However, I find myself reading this book and relating to so many of the points the author has presented. The idea of management, cost of management, higher-archaical struggles, organization and the real cost of these new trends.
"Loosely ...

There are more BLOGS than people in Canada

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I love data. There I said it! There is nothing like true hard facts to make me feel comfortable. In a feed from Techmeme, Pingdom.com crunched the numbers for 2009 with regard to the internet and the trends are not surprising but the numbers are!
As of December of 2009 there are now over 200 million websites. Of those websites there are 126 million blogs currently exist (I'd be surprised if 10 people read this!). No wonder clients harp on being lost in the "cloud." This is all more reason to look for alternative promotion and publication ...

Those Shoes Don’t Fit!

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I was actually surprised when I asked last night's panel about their experience with choosing a technology or platform that didn't fit. The panel's no response indicated that they always picked the right one. This can't be the case! To clarify, I mean that the software/platform/web application didn't do everything you wanted it to do or discovering that it just did too many things. The response that "I am sure it is just a simple database thing" to move from one to another system is not a good one.
First of all, I don't want ...

iPad a lot of flash, but no FLASH!?

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Seriously? No flash content on this new device. I doubt it is a technology problem even thought that is what Apple claims. Why can't these vendors kiss an make up? What is so difficult about displaying this content?
Many people don't realize that a lot of video content is in Flash format. Developers have a lot of control when it comes to video and using the Flash platform. If Apple really wants users to buy into this device they not only need to make it do most of the tasks an iPhone can ...

Featured Video

Social media is everywhere, happening all the time and, at times like this, act as a witness producing a byproduct. This video of a girl recording her solo guitar/singing debut (we have all seen this on youtube) began her recording session when the Mexicali earthquake hit. The shaking lasted for almost 50 seconds.